Last year’s lingerie creations from the artistic New York label Unforeseen Circumstances were all about fabric — specifically, the airy linen netting that was used in many of designer Teo Griscom‘s pieces. Was there a more original idea in designer lingerie all year?

For 2012, Teo continues her intriguing explorations, although this time her focus is on color — specifically, the desert palette of umbers and bleached neutrals you can see in these images. (To get an authentic look for these pieces, the photos were shot in a bullring in San Miguel Allende, Mexico!)

But there’s more going on here than just on-trend, color-blocked styles.

Teo, who also works as a clothing designer and a color trends consultant, is a longtime fan of the modern artist/sculptor Cy Twombly, whose deceptively primitive scrawls often seemed like experiments in color dynamics and composition. Twombly is probably best known for his duotone ‘blackboard’ paintings, but he also spent decades playing with color combinations.

Teo’s appreciation for Twombly is reflected in her spring palette choices, and particularly in the print shown in the main photo above — a seemingly random pattern drawn on sand-washed silk that evokes the primal appeal of cave drawings. It goes without saying you won’t see anything else like it this year.

Twombly spent most of his career living in Italy, where he died last summer at age 83, right around the time that Teo Griscom was putting together her Twombly-inspired spring line.

“It was so strange he died just as I was working on that collection,” said Teo, who has included Twombly artworks and companion swatches on her online moodboard for some time. “I can only hope he saw it.”

Twombly’s child-like drawings were often maligned by critics who were too lazy to explore their complex symbolic subtext and mythological references. But they could provoke deep passions in his admirers — in one famous incident in 2007, a French artist who claimed to be overcome with emotion left a lipstick imprint on one of Twombly’s massive canvases when she kissed it in a gallery.

Teo’s posthumous tribute conveys a similar ardor, but without damaging the artist’s legacy! He would, no doubt, be touched by the gesture.

Unforeseen Circumstances is available in only a handful of boutiques that specialize in designer labels, such as Jumelle, Lille and Kapital Japan later this year.

The color images below show UC’s spring line; below that, the B&W shots and the color swatches are a preview of what’s coming for fall, including more of that cool silk linen.